Though Portuguese settlers and Brazilians have lived in the sertão since the 16th century, it has never been an easy place to thrive. The primary reason is water.

The Summer Ecosystem Experiences for Undergraduates (SEE-U) program provides undergraduate students of all majors from all accredited colleges or universities with a global understanding of ecology and environmental sustainability. It provides students with the opportunity to conduct fieldwork in unique natural settings in addition to participation in a combination of classroom lectures and lab work.

I recently returned from a trip to visit our project site in Ceará, Brazil. While our project has included infrastructure construction, the heart of our work is a municipal water plan (PAM) for Milhã, an area in the central region of the state.

“With electricity and water, this place is heaven on earth.”

That is the opinion of several residents I spoke with last summer during a visit to Milhã, in the center of the state of Ceará, Brazil. In this rural, semi-arid region communities are small and close-knit, and many families have lived there, often in the same houses, for generations. People love the place, but they aren’t unaware of the difficulties of living without the modern conveniences that we in the US take for granted. When electricity arrived to the houses a few years ago, it was a huge improvement in their quality of life, bringing lights and other conveniences. When water arrives, they say, it will be heaven.

It’s the last day of my visit to Brazil, where I’ve been getting to know the staff of the Columbia Water Center Brazilian office, and learning about the projects here. The projects are a fascinating mixture of down-to-earth (literally down in the earth) sustainable water access, and high level climate modeling to support water management… read more

Water Safety and Sustainability: Resilient System Design under Climate Stress

The Columbia Water Center program in Ceará, Brazil, working in partnership with the Universidade Federal do Ceará, and with local and regional governments, develops appropriate drinking water infrastructure in rural communities. (Learn more in this blog piece) The following photos are from a progress report by local program staff, about the engineering and technical activities taking place around the installation of a supply system in the communities of Ingá and Pedra Fina, during the first two weeks of May, 2010.

One of Columbia Water Center’s major programs, funded by the PepsiCo Foundation, is to develop water infrastructure in rural Brazil, in areas that have had no public water service.  CWC’s local Director, Francisco de Assis de Souza Filho, was recently in New York, and on April 23 gave a talk about ‘Designing Sustainable Water Systems:… read more

Nordeste, the driest region in Brazil, has been castigated by heavy rainfall in the last two months. Yesterday a dam broke in the state of Piaui killing at least four people. The video below shows a partial bridge that collapsed after the dam break. The media shows every day more and more news about natural catastrophes. But is there enough evidences and facts to affirm that the frequency of extreme rainfall events is increasing across the globe? If so, can we blame global warming? or we just don’t understand the nature yet?